Steven Johnson: Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of InnovationReally intrigued by the title. Fabulously diverse in examples. If you ever felt like a square in round world, this book will make you sing for joy because that's what life is about--growing, moving, evolving.... The book is much stronger for being in Science section and not restricted to business innovation alone.

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Mar 21, 2005

Dwelve 2005: A Participatory, Online Journey

This is your invitation to participate in an online experiment being conducted over the next month.

The success of your next product or service (that includes the product You) doesn’t hinge on simply working harder and longer hours.

Having your manuscript, screenplay, film, better mousetrap, consultancy or whatever hit a striking unmistakable chord in an attention-weary world requires a full journey through the creative process to ensure it's truly remarkable ("remarkable", practically a Seth trademark).

If you are merely following lock-step with your competitors and peers (and certainly don't seek to rise to your potential), you can simply ruminate on a few ideas and then follow best practices. Stop here, do not venture further.

To astound the world, you must sink into creativity as a heroic act.

Over the course of the next month, I invite you to parallel my journey into the creative process (described in more depth in post, "Accelerating Elusive Aha! Moments") to come up with your own breakthrough ideas: whether you desire to flesh out "what's next" in your life path, compose a screenplay, develop the next killer app, hammer out a marketing strategy, or hone a business plan.

I'll be sharing the how-to of the process to keep you humming along in your parallel journey. And I'll be sharing honest in the moment what I'm actually doing myself. No theorizing. And I'll throw in juicy bits (I won't bore you with details) about my personal advances, my slipups, my fears, my story, my outcomes. This is the stuff of (unscripted) reality TV. And I'm the guinea pig. And so are you, if you choose to accept. You'll be in the privacy of your own home, I'm outed in the blog.

The 50,000 foot view of the creative process and rough timeline:

1. Preparation. (I call this stage, Saturation, because I am immersing myself in as much information as I can.) Now until April 8th. 2. Incubation. (Letting the ideas "simmer".) April 9th-April 12th. (If you are able to come to the San Francisco Bay Area, come in person to the Dwelve Live "Advance". I'll also offer tips for a solo incubation wherever you are.3. Illumination. (The aha! insight.) April 13th-17th.4. Translation. (Translating your insight into action.) April 18th-24th.

Step One: Commit.

If you ask: Why the heck am I doing this?

I'm stuck. I have a zillion ideas. Some I've shelved since the perspective changing tsunami experience. Others are half-baked. I'm awash in too many ideas. Some are very good. But not necessarily remarkable. And the clarity of where they fit into my life purpose has gotten a bit hazy. This is the only process that works for me to get to remarkable outcomes from my vastly more intelligent and heartfelt essential self. I have no choice.

I thought it would be fun to share tips while in the thick of it. I miss a lot in retrospective reviews. And I once thought I'd write a book about it. But a blog is better format for this and much more fun.

And I want to learn if this creative process works as well for others. I know it works for me. (At least when I'm doing it in private.) Tell me how did you adapt it, where did you struggle, where did you triumph, what were your outcomes...and why. I'd love to hear your experiences (I undoubtedly suspect I won't be able to respond to each piece of email, but I do savor it all.)

I'm right behind you.
For me translation remains the key point of struggle for me.
If translation is one voice in my head, self-loathing is its opposite. And they do chatter at each other. Always my struggle is to suppress the monkey mind.
I look forward journeying with you.

Jay - I definitely struggle with translation too. If it is truly a breakthrough idea (and often these alter our lives, they are not just a mere concept) the hardest part is then seeing it through. In phase 4 (translation) definitely will discuss fear of implementation and risk and doubt and all that.

I'm going to post my essay for the 100 Blogger book either today or tomorrow - it talks to this theme and your point.

¡Bueno, niña, que santa idea! I'm stuck right now @ the point where I've gotten somewhat beat up by others for my writing and feel stuck in the business-side of my projects as well as with my own inadequate web design skills. Going forward I wonder what tweaking I need to do to make audiences more amenable to my messages... I'll participate in your experiment to come up with "better ways to communicate" and "handling business mumbo-jumbo."

Evelyn, I am so with you on this. I feel that I have been in saturation mode for a while now. I too have recently lived through a life changing, complacency shattering experience. Ideas fill my head. Yet I wonder, why am I not doing more to live my life the way I envision it, the way I sometimes clearly glimpse it when I am calm, reflective and in touch with what is important. Is it fear? Or what? I wonder.

It sounds like a "search for beneficial surprise," as Max De Pree put it.

Real surprise - the totally unexpected. In a world so awash with images and insights, and in groups of people who as adults are taught to hide surprise because to show it would be a sign of weakness, that's hard to accomplish.

I think creativity arises from discovering and connecting. But sometimes I think our lives are set up to hinder those two things rather than support them because surprise (or creative heroics) make us feel scared, not engaged; stupid, not powerful. Doesn't it feel like all this intellectual disinterestedness is the Baal of our lives?

I've Dwelved (I think) now for about six months on a software project and I'm coming out of it. This is an interesting process you're discussing here. I've given my life over to the pursuit of software as a creative endeavor, inspired in part by ideas I've encountered here. This last stage has been one of developing solo work habits, and creating a body of work that will be a foundation.

This thing you are proposing, I'll have to get caught up, but I'm wondering, how do you choose a project? One month seems so ambitious to me, but I'd like to move forward in life in small steps...